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North Korean women in Pyongyang on Apr. 15

North Korea’s women are waking up.

Women are the chief drivers of North Korea’s marketplace economy, to the point where some have said, “If you go to one of the markets and toss pebbles, all you’ll hit are women.”

Subject to fewer organizational constraints than men – who as breadwinners and household heads are bound to the military and government organizations – women are obliged to contribute to the family’s subsistence through commercial activities.

“Through the markets, women are gaining a lot of experience with choice, and they’ve been moving proactively, broadening the scope of their activities as they question how they can better cope with reality,” said Um Hyun-sook, a North Korean defector who is now a research professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

As the collapse of the rationing system led to male heads of household depending on the earning capabilities of women, changes began to emerge in perceptions of women, who have been developing new ways of living. Many currency traders, wholesalers, and members of the emerging North Korean wealthy class referred to by the term “donju” (“masters of money”) are women. For the sake of their commercial activities, they have become increasingly sensitive to market information and trends in the outside world. Park Young-ja, a Korea Institute for National Unification research fellow and author of “North Korean Women,” observed, “North Korean women have broadened their networks working in marketplaces and elsewhere, with young women in particular gaining an increased awareness of women’s rights and equality as they’ve come to learn more through their smartphones and other avenues about the outside world and the lives of women in China and South Korea.”

Younger women also have role models in the form of recognized female officials like First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui – who has emerged as one of the two leading figures in North Korean diplomacy – along with Propaganda and Agitation Department Deputy Director Hyon Song-wol and Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) First Vice Director Kim Yo-jong, younger sister of leader Kim Jong-un. But while women look forward to change beneath the dual burden of making a living and raising children, North Korean culture remains male-centered. More and more women are forgoing marriage and childbirth amid increasingly widespread views that marriage means a life of arduous labor.

The clearest indication of this change can be found in the low birth rate. Despite the government implementing full-scale policies to encourage childbirth after the end of a famine and economic crisis known as the Arduous March in the mid-1990s, the per capita total fertility rate for married North Korean women aged 15 to 49 has dropped steadily, declining from 2.13 in 1993 to 2.01 in 2008 and 1.89 in 2014 (according to figures from the North Korean general population censuses in 1993 and 2008 and a 2014 joint study by the UN Population Fund and North Korean Central Bureau of Statistics).

“As recently as the mid-2000s, the reason for the low birth rate had to do with livelihood issues, but since the 2010s women have been avoiding childbirth for the sake of a better life,” Park Young-ja said.

“There’s a growing feeling of ‘I want to make a good life for myself, have few children, and raise them in such a way that they have nothing to envy,’ with a particularly defined trend of low birth rates among highly educated women living in cities,” she observed.

The cultural landscape has also been shifting in terms of marriage and divorce. As spouses, men now mostly favor women who have money or commercial acumen. The result has been a growing voice for women within the home – and a relative weakening of male leadership. The divorce rate has also been climbing amid changing views among women who previously adopted a “grin and bear it” approach under the North’s trial divorce system, which rarely grants divorces. More and more people support cohabitation without reporting a marriage, as well as splitting up when the relationship doesn’t work out; in parks and other locales, couples can often be seen engaged in bold romantic activities. The Kim Jong-il era’s crackdowns on “public indecency” are said to be more or less a thing of the past.

But a glass ceiling remains firmly in place over the heads of North Korean women. Women who hope to engage in larger-scale commerce or business activities require either the authority of their husband or connections with male party officials in powerful agencies such as the State Security Department.

Um Hyun-sook explained, “For women to engage in large-scale commerce, they have to receive support or rely on the authority of their husbands or male officials. If their husbands are ordinary workers, their only option is small-scale commerce.”

“North Korean women are changing, but it’s about making the most of the given conditions. They aren’t posing a challenge to the North Korean system,” she said.

The fact that women account for around 70% of recent North Korean defectors is seen as another indicator of the desire for change among North Korean women. As of June 2018, women in their 20s and 30s accounted for 43.01% of all defectors and 60.22% of all female defectors; since 2010, the motivation cited for defection has not been livelihood-related as in the past, but most often has to do with the desire for a better life.

According to Park Young-ja, Kim Jong-un “has a good understanding of the desire for change among young people and women of his generation.”

“Among the women who are the central figures in the marketplace economy, [Kim] has gotten a positive response for his policies to reduce market regulations and promote consumption, but reforms and openness will need to continue over the long term if there are going to be the kind of changes that young women want to see within the patriarchal and militarist aspects of the state,” she added.

By Park Min-hee, staff reporters

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